April 5, 2018 | Leave a comment As bandits go, the name of Elmer McCurdy may not be up there with the likes of Jesse James or Butch Cassidy, but for sheer incompetence, he stands alone. His life of crime was littered with bungled attempted robberies that were so inept, they have become the stuff of legend. Born on January 1st 1880 to Sadie McCurdy, an unmarried 17 year old, Elmer was adopted by Sadie’s brother and sister-in-law, in order to stave off the stigma of illegitimacy. As a young adult, McCurdy trained as a plumber, a job he seemed suited to, until he was made redundant due to an economic recession in 1898. Shortly thereafter, he began to lead an itinerant lifestyle, drifting from place to place, drinking heavily and working only occasionally. In 1907, Elmer elected to join the United States Army, where he was trained to use nitroglycerine, a highly explosive liquid, for demolition purposes. Discharged from the army in 1910, McCurdy made the fateful decision to use his new found pyrotechnic skills for criminal purposes. Unfortunately, as will soon become apparent, Elmer does not appear to have been the most attentive of pupils. Hearing that the Iron Mountain-Missouri Pacific Train was carrying a safe containing $4,000, he decided to try his hand at train robbery. Managing to stop the train and locate the safe, McCurdy became somewhat over-zealous in his application of nitroglycerine to the safe door. Instead of just removing the door, the blast destroyed the entire safe and most of its contents. Charred remnants of bank notes fluttered about the carriage and most of the silver coins had been fused to the safe walls by the explosion. In total, Elmer and his cronies only managed to steal about $450 between them. McCurdy’s next target was the Citizens Bank in Chautauqua, Kansas, which was treated to his unique style of banditry in September of 1911. Having spent two hours hammering his way through the bank wall, he again over-did it with the nitroglycerine charge, which blew the door of the bank’s vault right through the inside of the building, destroying everything in its path, but without damaging the safe inside. Elmer next tried to blow open the safe, but this time the charge failed to explode. Having by now made enough noise to waken the dead, the hopeless desperadoes were forced to flee with just $150 in coins, that had been left in a tray outside of the safe. In October of 1911, McCurdy heard on the grapevine, that a train carrying a massive $400,000 in cash, would shortly be passing through Okesa, Oklahoma. Of course, Elmer held up the wrong train, and left with a paltry $46 and a couple of bottles of whisky, that he had managed to coax out of the startled passengers. A contemporary newspaper account of the hold-up referred to it as “one of the smallest in the history of train robbery”. Nevertheless, McCurdy was by now a wanted man, and a $2,000 reward was offered for his capture. On the morning of 7th October, a posse of sheriffs with bloodhounds, tracked Elmer to a hay shed, where he had been hiding out whilst consuming the stolen whisky. Elmer McCurdy was killed by a single shot to the chest, inflicted upon him while he was lying down, presumably incapacitated by drink. The reward paid to the sheriffs, exceeded the amount that McCurdy had managed to steal during his entire criminal career, by a factor of three! However, it is not for what he failed to achieve in life that he is best remembered today. Bizarrely, Elmer’s career only really took off once he was dead! McCurdy’s corpse was delivered to the Johnson Funeral Home in Pawhuska, Oklahoma, where the undertaker, Joseph Johnson, awaited the arrival of next-of-kin to make arrangements for the burial. However, as days passed and the body remained unclaimed, Johnson decided to embalm Elmer with an arsenic-based preservative, that would effectively mummify the remains until such time as a living relative could be found. Elmer in His Coffin Unfortunately, as time went on, and with nobody coming forward to claim the mortal remains of Elmer McCurdy, the undertaker grew impatient and wanted to be paid for his services. It was at this point that the entrepreneurial corpse-minder hit upon the idea of putting Elmer on display and charging visitors a nickel to see “The Bandit Who Wouldn’t Give Up”. He dressed McCurdy in street clothes and stood him up in the corner of the funeral home, rifle in hand! Elmer was an immediate hit and Johnson received several offers for the mummy, but he refused all approaches as his dead companion was proving very lucrative indeed. Joseph Johnson’s money making scheme came to an end on 6th October 1916, when a man claiming to be Elmer’s long-lost brother came forward to claim the remains. Johnson reluctantly released the body to him, although the ‘relative’ turned out to be the owner of a travelling carnival, who promptly put McCurdy on display, billing him as “The Outlaw Who Would Never be Captured Alive”. Elmer McCurdy continued to prove a popular attraction for the next three decades, until the owner of the carnival died in 1949, whereupon the macabre exhibit was placed in storage, in a warehouse in Los Angeles. Elmer in Life and Death Elmer was not entirely forgotten though. In 1967 he made an appearance in the film She Freak, and in 1968 was exhibited at a show at Mount Rushmore. Subsequently, the remains were sold to the owner of an amusement park in Long Beach, California, where the dehydrated outlaw remained, hanging from gallows, until 1976, when a shocked worker realised that the mannequin he had been asked to move, was actually a human corpse. The Los Angeles Coroner’s Office conducted an investigation and was eventually able to identify the remains as that of McCurdy. On 22nd April 1977, Elmer McCurdy was finally laid to rest at the Summit View Cemetery in Guthrie, Oklahoma, over 65 years after his death. Around 300 people attended the graveside service; quite a turnout for a man who no-one wanted to bury! Elmer’s Headstone Sources: https://the-line-up.com/5-very-creepy-happenings-history-never-heard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elmer_McCurdy